


live in peace like this

by gloss



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Character Study, Family, FinnSundays, Gen, M/M, Names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 14:31:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6989068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn on owning, and things, and the necessity for names.</p><p>(For <a href="http://finnsundays.tumblr.com/">Finn Sundays</a> on Tumblr, theme "family".)</p>
            </blockquote>





	live in peace like this

**Author's Note:**

> title from Yo La Tengo, "[By Two's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubSmGuWM0SQ)"
> 
> written with & for GGFM ♥

Here are the things Finn owns: one jacket, very battered and repeatedly mended; three changes of clothes and one pair of boots; five pairs of underwear; a chip for admission to the mess hall; a credit account for when the Resistance can afford to pay a nominal salary (Poe calls it "really more an honorarium"). One frosty chip of sea glass from Ahch-To hung on a chain next to half of a Rebel Alliance dogtag.

Here are the things he uses but does not own: two blasters; ammunition; a wide, comfortable bed and its linens. 

Here are the intangible things he now has: a cause; a lover; two best friends; a future.

Here are the people he loves: Rey; Poe; Chewbacca; the general (though he'd never be able to tell her, he still knows that it's true); Kes.

Here is Finn, sitting cross-legged on that bed, arranging everything. The physical is stacked and arrayed before him - clothes, linens, blasters and their bolts - while he lists and organizes the abstract - names and faces, principles and categories - in his mind.

He does this every morning, back from the 'fresher, while drying off. Every morning he's alone, that is. When Poe's here, then he does it all mentally, during the shower itself.

His laundry - two changes of clothes and fresh linens - is folded, wrapped up with recycled cord. The label on top simply reads **FINN**. When his on-base duty rotation took him to laundry, he was the one who alphabetized the packs. Many of the humans had two names; at first he put them by first name. That's who they were, after all: Kaydel, Snap, Poe, not Ko Connix, Wexley, Dameron.

The laundry master, a tall, stoop-shouldered Abinyshi, corrected him with a brush of her fingertips across the back of his hand. "Surname, or sole name. That's how it's done."

He got that uprush of embarrassment at making a mistake where someone could see. 

She tapped his hand again, gently, and added, "Your species likes to make things so complicated."

Her own species, she said, spawned so profligately that you chose your own name at the time of ecdysis. If you made it that far, you got to be somebody. By contrast, Wookiees named their young as individuals with the tribe name appended, Chewie told him. (His laundry, if he had any, would be filed under **C** , not **B**.)

Poe told him that most human surnames aren't tribal, but smaller-scale, for linear family descent. His own is his father's name - but not his mother's, for some reason.

"It's simple," Wexley said when Finn asked him. He was from a different planet from Poe, so it stood to reason that things could be very different there than on Yavin-4. "You're making this way too complicated."

Bastian, however, told him both not to worry and that the issue wasn't simple. He just had the one name, too, which his grandmother gave him in honor of her best childhood friend. That was how they did it where he came from.

Family is a lot more complicated than a lot of the humans claim or pretend. The general and the Jedi are siblings, for example, but they don't share a surname, and it isn't because the general was married (speaking of whom, Finn'd thought "Solo" _was_ the man's name, and Han a title or family name). Their parents, like Poe's, didn't share one, either.

None of this even touches the fact that turning to the Dark Side seems to necessitate a name change: Vader, Kylo, who knows how many others.

"Hey, you're already up --" Poe slides open the door to their bunk. "What're you doing up?"

Finn waves his hand over the stacks. "Organizing."

"Yeah?" Poe drops his helmet and vest behind him, unzipping the flight suit as he tries to toe off one boot, stumbles, and catches himself against the wall. "Damn."

"Careful," Finn says, getting up, offering his arm.

"See, this --" Poe leans against him, arm going around his waist. His flight suit whispers and murmurs. " _This_ is why it's nice getting back in one piece."

He manages to pull off one boot, then sags against Finn, resting his sweat-greasy, flattened-hair head on Finn's shoulder. Finn drops a kiss on the crown of his skull, then keeps his lips there for longer than strictly necessary.

"Survival isn't enough any more?" Finn pilots him over to the edge of the bed, then gets down on one knee to unlace the other boot. Poe lies back, disrupting the laundry. 

"Shit, sorry --" He tries to pick up the stack, but things keep slipping out his hand. "I'm making it worse."

"It's fine," Finn tells him, clearing the stuff off the bed. "I was just about finished."

Poe pushes up onto his elbow, squinting at Finn with heavy-lidded eyes, ringed with a few different exhaustion-bruises. "Hi."

"Welcome home," Finn says, hauling Poe's legs up onto the bed before snapping out the quilt over him. 

Poe's eyes are already closing, but he reaches out, blind and trusting and Finn grabs his hand, squeezing hard, before placing it gently back down.

Finn gets dressed quickly; he's on-base for the next several shifts, so he holsters only the lighter blaster. The chain around his neck snags when he goes to straighten his jersey.

He used to be a thing. You number things, not people; even droids have names beyond the numeric, though most people could stand to treat droids a lot better than they do. You use things until they're broken and worthless.

He tried to be the best number he could be, he always did, but what he was exceeded the numeric. He wonders, now, what the others would have been named, by grandmothers or tribal sessions, moms and dads, even by themselves.

"You can have mine, if you want," Poe said when Finn first started asking about surnames. He grinned, and there was a flickering instant where it looked certain that he was going to make a joke. Then he shook it off and continued, "I can ask Kes if you want but I don't need to."

Finn touched the dogtag that Kes gave him the first time they met. Other troopers in the past had named themselves. They didn't need more than the one name, either. Rex never did; that's all his tag reads, and it's more than enough. CT-7567, like FN-2187, was a weapon, but Rex and Finn were people. Best man I ever knew, Kes said of Rex, and Poe nodded, like it was an important family fact.

"I'm good," Finn told him. Poe's mom, the general, General Calrissian's husband: none of them changed their name just because they found someone to love. That wasn't what made them family, any more than different names meant the general and Luke, or Rex and Kes, weren't. "I know who I am."

Now, before he pulls on the jacket that's probably seen more mending than half the uniforms in the resistance put together, Finn presses his palm against Poe's forehead and wishes him another welcome home and sweet dreams.


End file.
